There was good and bad this past month. The weather, for starters, was pretty good, if you’re a fish or, like me, aren’t ready for the long, hot summer to rear its sweaty head. Really, after such an extreme winter, I expected, as did that famous farmer who puts out that almanac, for summer to be brutally hot. (How extreme was it? Just ask all those frowny faces still standing at the bus stop at 7 a.m.)
Remembering 1980 again, when the 40 plus days of over 100 degrees had already begun, I’ll gladly take this Puget Sound–like extreme.
Another good thing is I haven’t had to water my grass, but it’s hard to really tell anymore where the lawn stops and the driveway begins because my concrete is now a lovely shade of moldy green.
Another good from not too long ago was a week away from work. Not that I mind work so terribly much, it’s just that, given a choice, I would choose play, probably 100 out of 100 times.
So KM and I took off for a week of that back in May. I planned for us to begin at the Lodge at Mount Magazine, and a day of hiking and vista staring. We got to the base of the mountain and began the drive up and up and up. Somewhere on that ascent, the visibility dropped to about fifty yards, then thirty, then ten, which limited the vista to the drops of moisture on my windshield or the green eyes of KM.
“Watch the road,” she said.
“What road?”
We stayed on the pavement, another good thing, which led to the lodge, now surrounded by heavy fog. My Honda’s thermometer said 46, but it felt colder when I stepped from the car.
Inside, I went right toward the restroom, having enjoyed a large coke for the last 20 miles or so. My back was also bothering me, so I filled my cup from the faucet and swallowed two Aleve. Then I drank the rest of the water and filled the Styrofoam half way again and drank all of it. Driving through fog and staring at green eyes is thirsty business.
The young man at the desk greeted me and asked if I wanted to keep the charges on my American Express. “Unless you want them on yours,” I offered. He didn’t smile, and I attributed his lack of humor acknowledgement to the altitude. Perish any thought that I wasn’t funny.
He gave me my plastic rectangle keys and handed me a single white piece of paper with a lot of official looking type on it. “You’ll want to read this,” he said. “We had a plumbing problem yesterday, and there’s a drinking water ban.” I read the top of the sheet and saw in bold-faced type at the top – DRINKING WATER BAN. This would have been one of those bad things I was talking about.
“Don’t worry, sir, we have plenty of bottled water. Just don’t drink from anywhere else.”
I guess that includes the gallon I just gorged on from the faucet in the men’s restroom, I thought to myself as I began to feel the effects of Typhoid beginning in my stomach.
I turned from him and faced KM. Then I looked around the now spinning room and saw dozens of the white sheets warning of water consumption taped all around the lobby, with two on the front glass doors we had come through.
“Oh yeah,” KM said. “Be sure you don’t drink the water.”
Another bad thing – It was the first day of vacation, and I was a dead man.